FRAMINGHAM – Three school officials hit with a lawsuit by a former Framingham High School social worker responded on Friday to his allegations, saying they did not pressure him to resign.

In an answer to Kevin Fox’s complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Boston on Feb. 14, Superintendent Stacy Scott, Framingham High principal Mike Welch, and Framingham High vice principal Jeff Convery deny most of Fox’s accusations, which center on the school administration’s handling of two sexual assaults alleged to have taken place at the high school during the spring of the 2011-12 school year.

The response claims the three defendants did not, as Fox claims, retaliate against him for his complaints about what he considered to be an insufficient response from the high school to the assault allegations, nor did they create a hostile work environment for him.

Welch, Convery and Scott are requesting Fox's complaint be dismissed with prejudice.

Fox has accused Welch and Convery - Scott did not become superintendent until after the assaults reportedly happened - of not adequately punishing the alleged perpetrator, whom Fox said was a junior at the high school at the time, and that all three officials brushed off his subsequent attempts to question them on the issue.

His complaint accuses Scott, Welch and Convery of making him a scapegoat for the negative publicity generated in part by a Facebook page Fox created about the assaults, and that his resignation last March was "in direct response to the pervasive retaliation against him by the defendants."

Fox's complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as compensation for his emotional suffering as a result of the ordeal.

In Friday's response, the accused officials deny virtually all of Fox's claims about their treatment of him and mishandling of the assault cases. They do, however, corroborate some of his account, including various meetings between them and Fox and basic details about the sexual assaults, including that the alleged assailant was punished after the second incident with a five-day suspension.

The administrators also admit they were prepared to punish the student again in November 2012, after he had already finished his senior football season at Framingham High, and that Welch had told Fox to ask the first victim and her mother if they approved.

Fox, in his complaint, said they did not: "They indicated that the discipline should have been issued, at the very least, when the assault was disclosed; not following the football season when the male student was already allowed to participate in the entire season."

Scott O'Connell can be reached at 508-626-4449 or soconnell@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ScottOConnellMW